MASQUE - Softcover

Byrne, Elena Karina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1932195572 ISBN 13: 9781932195576

Publisher: Tupelo Press, 2007

Synopsis

In verse simmering with sensuality, Elena Karina Byrne eloquently reveals, then carefully slices away, layer after layer of the masks we wear until our most secret selves are exposed. Pretense is overthrown in her exotic and electric imagery, irresistibly drawing the reader into an unabashedly intimate internal dialogue.

About this title

About the Author

Elena Karina Byrne is a visual artist, teacher, editor, Poetry Consultant and Moderator for The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, and former 12 year Regional Director of the Poetry Society of America. She has organized readings for the University of Southern California's Doheny Memorial Library, the J. Paul Getty Center GRI, and the Chateau Marmont. Currently she is Literary Programs Director for The Ruskin Art Club and the Museum Of Contemporary Art's Night Vision poetry programs. She is also working with the West Hollywood Book Fair's Planning Committee and with Red Car studios on several short film projects including, ""Muse of Fire"" and ""Why Shakespeare?""

Elena was the 2005 Poetry Co-Editor for The Los Angeles Review. She was one of three judges for the 2006 PEN USA Literary Award in Poetry. A ten-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Elena's many recent publications, among others, include, The Yale Review, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, Volt, Pool, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Antioch Review, Verse, The Journal, Tri-Quarterly, Poetry Daily Anthology, Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry, Spunk and Bite: a writer's guide to punchier, more engaging language and style, and Best American Poetry 2005. Forthcoming works include The Fable Language (poetry), and Insignificance (essays).

Review

The Greeks highest compliment to Odysseus was to call him myriad-minded. Shall we say of Elena Karina Byrne's amazing sequence that it is myriad-masked? By turns poignant, intricate, ingenious Byrnes poems explore and dramatize the theme of mask into a multiplicity of insights and imaginings almost as rich as consciousness itself. Gregory Orr

""Ancient, proliferative, profligate, and prophetic as language itself I am that greased machinery of heresy and hearsaythese poems might have issued from the oracle at Delphi herself... Angie Estes

""Instantly ticklish and slowly narcotic, the language of Elena Karina Byrnes curious index of masks in her book nearly confounds the rigour of its ancient form, the poetic catalogue. Yet one cannot help but trail the voice threading through these veils made of words, as once Luciferian and terribly vulnerable to its own power, as it escorts the reader, and abandons her, into a dappled space reminiscent of one of Tolstoy's great Russian ballsa social and erotic prospect distilled to meteoric gestures. One can only yield to the naked hermeticism of this book Daniel Tiffany --Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Tupelo Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1932195572
• ISBN 13: 9781932195576
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 86